


Phantom Limb

by pluto



Category: Firefly
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-18
Updated: 2011-03-18
Packaged: 2017-10-17 02:23:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/171923
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pluto/pseuds/pluto
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Zoe didn't exactly know that she'd end up hunting Reavers, not in the active part of her brain, when she'd left Serenity.</p><p>Warning: Spoilers for all of Serenity!</p>
            </blockquote>





	Phantom Limb

**Author's Note:**

> Written for dark_fest. Prompt: Zoe can't get over Wash's death and starts going after Reavers on her own.

The limping transport bleats out its distress into the blackness of space, a wounded lamb rendered stupid by fear. The settlers inside ought to be grateful when it's Zoe who finds them first, and they are, right up until she herds them into the escape pod and launches it towards a nearby moon.

They'll be safe there, she tells them, until she can come back for 'em. And in case that can't happen, well, she's got a ship stowed in a crater. They can put on suits when the air gets thin and take a little walk. But her nav won't unlock until eight hours have passed, so they'd better not try it until she's good and dead for sure.

Once they're away, Zoe moves through the transport from cargo hold to captain's chair, hard at work, always listening. She leaves the distress signal crying. Busts the chain drive to add to the leakage, bloody the water. Takes note of the most likely entry points and lays down sheet-mines, flares,sticky-traps over doors. She's quick but careful, got it down to a system, these days. Works from outside in, until she's bounded on all sides by all sorts of defenses.

It's the mess hall that she ends up in. She crouches behind the food prep counter and she checks her weapons. Pistols slung against her ribs, automatic rifle across her back, next to a boom canon, a knife against the curve of her spine, more guns strapped to her thighs and ankles. Feels her back tooth with the tip of her tongue. Suicide's not the way she wants to go, but it may be the best option, given some cases.

She settles down, waiting and watching.

***

The Captain, she remembers, was so sure she meant to do herself some kind of harm. "Not gonna let you do it," he'd said. "Not gonna stand here while you crawl off somewhere, die like a dog."

"Dying ain't what I'm planning, sir."

"Ain't it? I see that look in your eye. Man ain't worth dying for--no man."

"Like I said, sir. Not aiming to die."

"We all got our sadnesses to carry."

She'd looked at him, honest. "Ain't sad."

"Zoe--"

"Ain't sad," she repeated. She hadn't been lying. "Just got this feeling. Like... someone who lost an arm, a leg. Sometimes stand up expecting that leg to be there and startled when it ain't. Like that, sir, is how I feel."

"Don't see why such a feeling might compel you to leave."

She'd shaken her head, unable to explain. He had looked at her long and hard, puzzling something out, in his way. Had asked, at last, "Is it some kinda stupid revenge you're planning?"

She had shrugged, said, "I don't know, sir. Don't plan on it being stupid."

"And if I said anything you pull in the name of folk what's dead is like to be stupid?"

"Lotta men have died, in the name of a pretty dead girl. Lotta wars fought."

"He wasn't so pretty."

"Was to me," she said, almost smiling. Had turned to leave, and he'd said:

"You go, I'll be the one falling on my face 'cause I got no gorram leg."

"You got others to pick you up."

"You too," Captain had said. And he thought he spoke true, but she knew better. Knew that if she was gone others'd take her place at the captain's side, and knew that none of them could do the same for her.

When she'd said her goodbyes it seemed she'd had the right of it: the young doc nervously palming her hand, looking helpless and itching to give her a shot of something, restore her reason like they'd finally restored his sister's; Kaylee's guilt almost tangible in the air, as if her newfound happiness was a sure wound to her friend; Inara trying to alternately woo her to stay and guilt her with gentle admonitions of how she'd be letting Mal down.

Strangely enough, it was only Jayne who seemed to understand. "Sometimes ya gotta," he'd said as she passed by on her way off the ship, barely looking up from the cubed protein he was shoveling down. "Only way to feel right again."

She'd paused, and nodded.

If she ever felt right again, she'd told herself then--she'd come back. If Mal would have her back, if there was still a place for her. But she didn't think she would feel right again. Best she could hope for was some sort of feeling in that absent part of her, anything at all.

***

Somewhere in the direction of the rear hold, distant, Zoe hears metal ring on metal. She cocks her shotgun and crouches. Moment later she hears a blast. The first of the mines. She doesn't get too confident--may have wounded the intruder but she doubts she's killed. She pulls the handheld monitor she's linked into the ship's systems towards her, counts the green blips on the screen. More blasts, and then none as the Reavers do away with her visible defenses in the hold. She doesn't move yet; there are more surprises waiting. When all the little blips pass into the main corridor, she activates the fire doors behind them. Seals them in, all-unexpected.

Nobody gets out until she's dead, or they are.

The transport's less-than-perfect structure shudders with another explosion. She frowns; rigged the south corridor a little too well. It'd be funny if this ended in some sort of fumble, if she accidentally blew herself into the vacuum of space. A senseless ending. Might even be fitting.

She tightens her grip on the shotgun. Rubs her thumb over the remote self-destruct signaller she's taped to her wrist. She'd prefer not to give them that easy death, but she will if she has to.

The handheld display shows them closing in, short two of their number. She'll lose her advantage once they spot her, so if she can whittle them down by two more... The most she's faced in an open space was three, and she got out of that by winding them down a narrow corridor, hiding and striking and leading, crippling then killing. Two is better. One on one is best, but less a challenge. She supposes she's gotten used to having the odds stacked against her.

Twenty meters now; two more long corridors, the medbay and a storage room before they get to her. She watches, something like eager as they near the medbay, waits as she feels the first stirring of life in her phantom limb.

***

She didn't exactly know that she'd end up hunting Reavers, not in the active part of her brain, when she'd left Serenity. She'd had some thought towards waiting for them on Miranda, maybe, rigging herself with the kind of explosives that could put a good crater in a planet. But she hadn't been lying to Mal when she said she wasn't setting out to die. Mostly she had just needed to leave. To stop walking into the cockpit and seeing River there, or Mal, or Jayne, instead of the face she'd expected. Climbing into her squeaky cot and knowing half of it lay empty and cold. Laughing and realizing she wasn't laughing honestly, wasn't laughing the way that'd once been so easy to her.

"Weren't good for her," as Kaylee would've said, and so Zoe had left Serenity with all her possessions in a shockingly light duffle and no idea of what she'd do next. Picked up transport to the outer ring, to Haven. To say hello and goodbye, she told herself.

She never made it there.

Reavers set on the ship in the black of space, their drives belching plasma, hulls studded with the skeletons of their conquests, machine and man. The crew had taken up arms, leaving the passengers to huddle in their quarters. Wouldn't be smart to use the escape pods, the crew said, only be something for the Reavers to toy with. But Zoe had the feeling that the pods were just old and ill-cared for and the captain didn't want to admit it.

She had found the shotgun in her duffle, checked it, and taken up sentry over the old couple and the wide-eyed family that were her fellows.

The Reavers ripped their way through the crew in a terrifying ten minutes. Zoe found their flayed and torn bodies strewn down one hallway later on, all fallen in one direction, like the Reavers had been a strong wind, knocked them over. They'd been ill-prepared, no idea of what they were against.

She got her own good glimpse of the Reavers as they came roaring down the narrow corridor leading to the quarters, and known her shotgun would do her little good. One of the children had started weeping, one of the men moaning for her to shoot them now, while she still had ammo.

And then she'd felt it: blood pounding, a hot, greedy rush of feeling that she thought she'd lost.

The Reavers were forced into single-file down that narrow corridor, and lucky for her it was long. She took careful aim, went for the killing shots. Reavers could endure agonies no normal man could endure, might even enjoy 'em, but they couldn't keep walking with nothing in their brainpans, with no hearts to pump their wretched blood. They were still men in that way. She dropped three and clogged the narrow corridor, forcing the rest to climb over their colleagues' bodies, and then she fell back and sealed up the door, shouting at the rest to aid her.

There wasn't much for them to use as weapons, but they had done the best that they could, she and those of the other passengers who stepped up to help her. The old man wielding a chair leg as if it were a club, the wife with her sleeves rolled up and an axe she salvaged from the fire-fighting rig, her eldest son and a hunting rifle he'd planned to shoot skeets with.

They stood no chance against the Reavers, but they had fought like rabid dogs. And somehow, at the end of it, Zoe found herself standing, her blood singing through her body, covered in gore up to her elbows. She held the axe the settler-woman had dropped, and she was not smiling, but she felt alive. She felt undeniably, ferociously whole.

After that, she hadn't stopped.

***

There's a hollow clank and ring of metal, a scrabbling. She knows they might've given up this venture as too dull if she hadn't enraged them with explosives and traps full of metal spikes and other taunts. But now they're furious, and they know she's aboard, and they'll come to kill her and worse if they can.

She counts the blips on her monitor. Down to three, now. It's a small crew of them, but that don't mean nothing. On one of her hunts she found the remnants of what one Reaver had done. Ship of Alliance fools had captured it, thinking to do what, she can't say, and it had gotten loose. Torn straight through the criss-crossed mesh meant to hold it, got burned to a crisp by the energy restraints, and still killed every last one of the crew with glorious relish before succumbing to its escape-inflicted wounds.

She wouldn't like to admit, but she's learned a thing or two from studying what they've left behind.

The Reavers are a section away. Then twenty feet, and then none. They burst through the doors of the galley and trigger the acid traps she's laid for them. The front one shrieks as its face burns off, its right arm and left foot dissolve. But she doesn't let her guard down. It's still a threat, swivels 'round in an instant as she triggers a decoy on the far side of the room. Lifts the remnants of its lip over acid-eaten barbs of teeth. She raises her shotgun before it can step deeper into the room and puts a bullet through the molten pit of its former eye.

The Reaver drops, but Zoe's given up her position. She moves in a hurry to buy herself a little more time. Takes a fast look; sees the second has entered the galley, the third near behind it. Aims and fires.

She catches the third off guard, bullet straight through the brain. The second one roars and closes the distance between them with one impossible leap. It lands on top of the prep counter and snarls like no man ought to be capable of snarling, and then it's on her, knife and teeth gashing her body armor.

She's normally a cold fighter, shutting down until the battle is done, but with the Reavers, every time, she is anything but. She's full of hate as she wards off the slashing fingers, the brute knee prying between her own. Full of fury and lust for revenge, for violence. No one would call her cool-headed as she wrenches a pistol from the underarm holster and pushes it between them, her teeth bared like a wild thing, and fires. The Reaver hardly notices as half its side goes missing. She digs her fingers into the hole, grabs the first thing she finds and yanks, twists. It's nasty business and the smell ain't pleasant but the Reaver rears back.

She puts her boot in its stomach and kicks. It cracks against the counter. Shakes its head like a big dog and then comes for her again.

They wrestle, rolling on the galley floor. Teeth close on the upper curve of Zoe's ear and she bites down on a scream at the crunch of cartilege. She's got her long knife in hand, carves the point of it through a patched place in the Reaver's armor, feels it slip through muscle and shear flesh off bone. The Reaver's fingertips tear into her thigh and she kicks it away again, the top of her ear still in its teeth.

It grins at her; she grimaces back. Touches the butt of the second pistol--if she's quick she might be able to put a bullet through its heart. She pulls the heavy-bladed machete instead. This time when it comes for her she puts all her strength into a swing. Risky, stupid, but it works. She hacks off its leading leg at the right knee. The Reaver stumbles, but it ain't stopped. She gets a blade through the foot for her gamble. Swearing, she takes off the Reaver's arm in payment for her wound. Then the other arm, coming for her with nasty, torn nails. The Reaver still lunges for her, and she pins it down with her knee, blade raised.

It smiles up at her, laughs, its face a self-inflicted ruin. Not for the first time and not for the last, she expects, she sees something too familiar there, in its glittering eyes.

She drives the killing blow through its heart.

***

The Alliance woman on Miranda said Reavers were the ones who went mad on the Pax, the slim percentage who raged to live instead of laid down and died.

Zoe thinks, sometimes, that she would rather be a Reaver than docile and dead. Giving up as the passion went out of her.

She fills her phantom heart with fury and rage, and she fights and savages and kills another day, until she's through. She wonders, sometimes, if he'll look at her in horror, in that great beyond, if there is one; if he'll look at her and see nothing but a Reaver in her place.

She hopes that ain't so, but if it is... if it is, she'll tell him, she had to keep living somehow, and she hopes he'll understand.


End file.
